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GEORGE POTTER is sitting on the bunk in the third holding cell down a short corridor that s out theat the parking lot, which has lately been the scene of sopeople He doesn’t turn at the sound of Jack’s approaching footfalls

As he walks, Jack passes two signs ONE CALL MEANS ONE CALL, reads the first AA MEETINGS MON AT 7 PM, NA MEETINGS THURS AT 8 PM, reads the second There’s a dusty drinking fountain and an ancient fire extinguisher, which some wit has labeled LAUGHING GAS

Jack reaches the bars of the cell and raps on one with his house key Potter at last turns away from theJack, still in that state of hyperawareness that he now recognizes as a kind of Territorial residue, knows the essential truth of the le look It’s in the sunken eyes and the dark hollows beneath thehtly hollowed temples with their delicate nestles of veins; it’s in the too sharp prominence of the nose

"Hello, Mr Potter," he says "I want to talk to you, and we have to make it fast"

"They wanted me," Potter remarks

"Yes"

"Maybe you should have let ’em take me Another three-four months, I’-card Dale has given him, and Jack uses it to unlock the cell door There’s a harsh buzzing as it trundles back on its short track When Jack re stops Downstairs in the ready roo

Jack comes in and sits down on the end of the bunk He has put his key ring away, not wanting the metallic sot it?"

Without asking how Jack knows, Potter raises one large gnarled hand ¡ª a carpenter’s hand ¡ª and touches his ut That was five years ago I took the pills and the shots like a good boy La Riviere, that was That stuffup ever’where Corners and just about ever’where Once I threw up in my own bed and didn’t even know it Woke up the nextabout that, son?"

"My mother had cancer," Jack says quietly "When I elve Then it went away"

"She get five years?"

"More"

"Lucky," Potter says "Got her in the end, though, didn’t it?"

Jack nods

Potter nods back They’re not quite friends yet, but it’s edging that way It’s how Jack works, always has been

"That shit gets in and waits," Potter tells hioes away, not really Anyway, shots is done Pills is done, too Except for the ones that kill the pain I co Jack needs to know, and time is short, but it’s his technique, and he won’t abandon orks just because there are a couple of State Police jarheads downstairs waiting to take his boy Dale will have to hold theh little town And I like the river I go down ever’ day Like to watch the sun on the water Sometimes I think of all the jobs I did ¡ª Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois ¡ª and then so Sometimes I just sit there on the bank and feel at peace"

"What was your line of work, Mr Potter?"

"Started out as a carpenter, just like Jesus Progressed to builder, then got too big for oes around calling himself a contractor Iwo wo I missed was the Cadillac It had a sot my bad news and come here"

He looks at Jack

"You knohat I think so’s close to a better world, one where things look and so around with folks ¡ª I’m not a friendly type person ¡ª but that doesn’t ot this idea in my head that it’s not too late to be decent You think I’m crazy?"

"No," Jack tells him "That’s pretty much why I came here myself I’ll tell you how it is for me You kno if you put a thin blanket over a , the sun will still shine through?"

George Potter looks at hiht Jack doesn’t even have to finish the thought, which is good He has found the wavelength ¡ª he alift ¡ª and now it’s tiet down to business

"You do know," Potter says simply

Jack nods "You knohy you’re here?"

"They think I killed that lady’s kid" Potter nods toward the"The one out there that was holdin’ up the noose I didn’t That’s what I know"

"Okay, that’s a start Listen to me, now"

Very quickly, Jack lays out the chain of events that has brought Potter to this cell Potter’s brow furrows as Jack speaks, and his big hands knot together

"Railsback!" he says at last "I shoulda known! Nosy goddamn old man, always askin’ questions, always askin’ do you want to play cards or maybe shoot some pool or, I dunno, play Parcheesi, for Christ’s sake! All so he can ask questions Goddamn nosey parker"

There’s o on with it for a while Cancer or no cancer, this old fellow has been ripped out of his ordinary routine without much mercy, and needs to vent a little If Jack cuts him off to save time, he’ll lose it instead It’s hard to be patient (how is Dale holding those two assholes off ? Jack doesn’t even want to know), but patience is necessary When Potter begins to widen the scope of his attack, however (Morty Fine comes in for some abuse, as does Andy Railsback’s pal Irv Throneberry), Jack steps in

"The point is, Mr Potter, that Railsback followed so way to put it Railsback was led to your roo at his hands But he nods He’s old, he’s sick and getting sicker, but he’s four counties over from stupid

"The person who led Railsback was almost certainly the same person who left the Polaroids of the dead children in your closet"

"Yar, makes sense And if he had pictures of the dead kiddies, he was prob’ly the one who ht So I have to wonder ¡ª "

Potter waves an iot to wonder Who there is around these parts who’d like to see Chicago Potsie strung up by the neck Or the balls"

"Exactly"

"Don’t want to put a stick in your spokes, sonny, but I can’t think of nobody"

"No?" Jack raises his eyebrows "Never did business around here, built a house or laid out a golf course?"

Potter raises his head and gives Jack a grin "Course I did How else d’you think I kne nice it is? Specially in the summer? You know the part of town they call Libertyville? Got all those ’ye olde’ streets like Camelot and Avalon?"

Jack nods

"I built half of those Back in the seventies There was a fella around thensoht I knew Was he in the business?" This last seeives his head a brief shake "Can’t reettin’ on then, o"

But Jack, who interrogates as Jerry Lee Lewis once played the piano, thinks it does matter In the usually dim section of hison Not a lot yet, but maybe more than just a few

"A moke," he says, as if he has never heard the word before "What’s that?"

Potter gives him a brief, irritated look "A citizen whowell, not exactly a citizen Someone who knows people who are connected Or maybe sometimes connected people call him Maybe they do each other favors Ato be"

No, Jack thinks, but et you a Cadillac with that nice set a little more intimate now This is not a question Jack can address to a Mr Potter

"Maybe," Potter says after a grudging, considering pause "Maybe I was Back in Chi In Chi, you had to scratch backs and wet beaks if you wanted to land the big contracts I don’t kno it is there now, but in those days, a clean contractor was a poor contractor You know?"

Jack nods

"The biggest deal I ever o Just like in that song about bad, bad Leroy Brown" Potter chuckles rustily For aabout cancer, or false accusations, or al in the past, and it may be a little sleazy, but it’s better than the present ¡ª the bunk chained to the wall, the steel toilet, the cancer spreading through his guts

"Man, that one was big, I kid you not Lots of federal h went houy, this moke, ere in a horse race ¡ª "

He breaks off, looking at Jack ide eyes

"Holy shit, what are you, ic?"

"I don’t knohat you uy who showed up here That was the e" But Jack thinks he is And although he’s starting to get excited, he shows it no ’s little nose-pinching trick

"It’s probably nothing," Potter says "Guy had plenty of reasons not to like yours truly, but he’s got to be dead He’d be in his eighties, for Christ’s sake"

"Tell me about him," Jack says

"He was a"And he o, because when he showed up here, I’ a different na-develop about the size of his teeth and the way they seeu toward this ooseflesh, but he returns the sh This is also hoorks

"If we’re gonna talk about mokin’ and swinkin’, you better call uy in Chicago?"

"That much is easy," Potter says "It was summer when the bids went out, but the hotshots were still bellerin’ about how the hippies caave the cops and the mayor a black eye So I’d say 1969 What happened was I’d done the building co favor, and I’d done another for this old wo Commission that Mayor Daley had set up So when the bids went out, uy ¡ª the moke ¡ª I have no doubt that his bid was lower He knew his way around, and he musta had his own contacts, but that tiruesoain

"Moke’s bid? Soo Potsie nails the job Then, four years later, theon the Libertyville job Only that ti was square-john I pulled no strings I ht after the contract arded, just by accident And he says, ’You were that guy in Chicago’ And I say, ’There are lots of guys in Chicago’ Now this guy was a moke, but he was a scary moke He had a kind of smell about hi and strong in those days, I could be mean, but I was pretty meek that time Even after a drink or two, I was pretty uys in Chicago, but only one who diddledht have asked how good his ot his head knocked on the floor, but with him I just took it No more words passed between us He walked out I don’t think I ever saw hiain, but I heard about hi the Libertyville job Mostly fro a house of his own in French Landing For his retireh to retire back then, but he was gettin’ up a little Fifties, I’d sayand that was in ’72"

"He was building a house here in town," Jack lish houses The Birches, Lake House, Beardsley Manor, you know"

"What name?"

"Shit, I can’t even remember the moke’s name, how do you expectI do reot a reputation"

"Bad?"

"The worst There were accidents One guy cut his hand clean off on a band saw, alot hi and ended up paralyzedwhat they call a quad You knohat that is?"

Jack nods

"Only house I ever heard of people were calling haunted even before it was all the way built I got the idea that he had to finish most of it himself"

"What else did they say about this place?" Jack puts the question idly, as if he doesn’t care much one way or the other, but he cares a lot He has never heard of a so-called haunted house in French Landing He knows he hasn’t been here anywhere near long enough to hear all the tales and legends, but so like this would pop out of the deck early

"Ah, man, I can’t remember Just that" He pauses, eyes distant Outside the building, the crowd is finally beginning to disperse Jack wonders how Dale is doing with Brown and Black The tiotten what he needs froh to tantalize

"One guy told me the sun never shone there even when it shone," Potter says abruptly "He said the house was a little way off the road, in a clearing, and it should have gotten sun at least five hours a day in the suuys lost their shadows, just like in a fairy tale, and they didn’t like it And so in the woods Sounded like a big one A ine Stories get started, and then they just kinda feed on themselves"

Potter’s shoulders suddenly slump His head lowers

"Man, that’s all I can reo?"

"Can’t remember"

Jack suddenly thrusts his open hands under Potter’s nose With his head lowered, Potter doesn’t see theets a noseful of the dying smell on Jack’s skin

"What? Jesus, what’s that?" Potter seizes one of Jack’s hands and sniffs again, greedily "Boy, that’s nice What is it?"

"Lilies," Jack says, but it’s not what he thinks What he thinks is The memory of o?"

"Itso like beer stein That’s not it, but it’s close Best I can do"

"Beer stein," Jack says "And as his na three years later?"

Suddenly there are loud, arguing voices on the stairs "I don’t care!" someone shouts Jack thinks it’s Black, the more officious one "It’s our case, he’s our prisoner, and we’re taking hi that the paperwork ¡ª "

Brown: "Aw, fuck the paperwork We’ll take it with us"

"What was his na, Potsie?"

"I can’t ¡ª " Potsie takes Jack’s hands again Potsie’s own hands are dry and cold He s exhale of his breath he says: "Burnside Chummy Burnside Not that he was chuht have been Charlie"

Jack takes his hands back Charles "Chu like Beer Stein

"And the house? What was the na down the corridor noith Dale scurrying after them There’s no time, Jack thinks Damnit all, if I had even five minutes more ¡ª

And then Potsie says, "Black House I don’t know if that’s what he called it or what the subs workin’ the job got to calling it, but that was the nae of Henry Leyden’s cozy living roo with a drink at his elbow and reading about Jarndyce and Jarndyce "Did you say Bleak House?"

"Black," Potsie reiterates impatiently "Because it really was It was ¡ª "

"Oh dear to Christ," one of the state troopers says in a snotty look-what-the-cat-dragged-in voice thathis face It’s Brown, but when Jack glances up, it’s Brown’s partner he looks at The coincidence of the other trooper’s na up fro here, Hollywood?" Black asks